


Boy with No Name

by Hayato (TheLennyBunny)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Complete, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto)-centric, Gen, aha um, not complete shit!baby naruto and sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 02:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12049491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLennyBunny/pseuds/Hayato
Summary: Sakura and Sasuke's bodies always read "Uzumaki Naruto". Fate doesn't account for existential crises.





	Boy with No Name

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSAJ0l4OBHM

When the Kyuubi attacks, there’s an inordinate amount of damage. The civilian district and Clan compounds are demolished in some areas, with the Uchiha district so ruined that they’re forced to move to the edge of the village. Dozens of shinobi were killed trying to fend off the attack, and even more civilians are dead, not able to escape the scope of the destruction quickly enough. It’s horrible, and a heavy burden.

It leaves no time to name the child that was sacrificed for the greater good. Sarutobi wants to looks after him, sift through Minato and Kushina’s things to see if they had any names in mind, anything at all, to honor them. He doesn’t have time, and they were too secretive after the first trimester for him to have any good ideas.

In the end, the infant’s name is left blank on his birth certificate. He’ll get around to it, once the village’s wounds have been soothed.

* * *

 

The people around the village call him freak, monster, demon. The matron at the orphanage tends towards boy no matter how many children there are. They’re never around him anyways, and her tone gives away who she’s talking about.

He doesn’t know if he’s actually got a name, but in the meantime he just calls himself Kiiroi. It’s bland, but it works. It leaves him wondering, though. Does someone just have the word yellow written on their body? Or do they have one of the things that the villagers call him scrawled? Or maybe something else?

He’d ask the old man, but. There’s always something holding him back when he gets close to it, because what if he doesn’t, really doesn’t? What if he’s just some nameless monster?

When two names resolve themselves on the inside of his thighs on his fifth birthday, he decides he can’t be. Monsters don’t have mates.

* * *

 

Having two soulmates is seen as an auspicious thing in Clan circles. It presents a chance to gain an upper hand on two other clans, enemies or allies, as well as being seen as a blessing doubled by the gods.

Sasuke’s appear a little after his fourth birthday, resolving on the left side of his back. He can’t read them, so he has Itachi read them aloud, in the dim light of the morning. No one else is up yet, because Sasuke had only seen them out of the corner of his eye when going to the bathroom, and had immediately run to his brother.

“Haruno Sakura.” He says, tapping at what the boy thinks is the top one.

“And the other? What about that one!” Itachi, unseen, feels his lips thin. The other one...

“Uzumaki Naruto.” The name’s completely unfamiliar. Both are, but the first one didn’t have Itachi using that tone of voice.

“Is that bad? Are they dead, or a missing nin, or-”  Itachi hurries to calm him down. He honestly doesn’t know, but he isn’t about to say that. But the Uzumaki clan, they’ve been scattered to the winds for years. The last known one was Uzumaki Kushina, who’s buried in the ground.

“I’m sure they’re amazing people, otouto. Don’t worry.”

* * *

 

Sakura’s marks appear on an unremarkable day sometime while she’s eight. She wakes up, ready to go to the academy, and notices something on her stomach. She thinks it’s dirt for a split second before realising, no, those are  _ names _ .

_ Two _ . More than one’s uncommon, something to gossip about, and she managed it. She runs to the bathroom, wanting to know, who, who?

It is very hard to read backwards. She manages.  _ Uzumaki Naruto _ , stationed to the right of her bellybutton, written in stark black.  _ Uchiha Sasuke  _ is curling around her hip on the other side.

She doesn’t recognise Uzumaki, but she knows the Uchiha, and Sasuke in particular. Her stomach plummets, because he’s in her class, heir to the clan. She’s interacted with him a total of once, when she bumped into him and he glared at her.

His whole family was murdered half a year ago. 

Since then, he’s been standoffish, glaring at anyone who comes near, and not talking to anyone but the teachers. Everyone knows his grades have risen, and he’s hardly seen outside class.

Sakura doubts he even knows her name. Is hers even on him? Would he even believe her, if she said she had his? The girls in class, they all tried to claim it at one point, because he had been one of the most popular students ever since they started school. They’d come in with sloppily drawn characters and insist that he was their soulmate. Sakura didn’t have a chance at being taken seriously. She was a weakling civilian, who’d never stood out in class and went along with the, the, gossiping? Was that the right word?

She didn’t know about Uzumaki Naruto, but Sasuke wouldn’t want someone like her. Thinking about his family and what happened to them, he... didn’t  _ need  _ someone like her. 

Sasuke needed someone strong.

There was an abstract idea forming in her mind, and she let it build as she tugged on her clothes for the day. 

* * *

He’s finally given a name when he starts academy classes. “Heishi”. He’s... a bit resentful of it. Five years, and when he finally gets an answer, it’s one marking him as another face in the crowd. They might as well as called him Mob. He hopes his parents, whoever they were, didn’t actually name him that, because he's definitely not calling _himself_ that.

The old man looks so incredibly sad, when he tells him.

The other kids in class, they’re almost all Clan. Their names stand out, prominent since birth, with Inuzuka and Yamanaka and Uchiha known by practically everyone. Kiiroi feels. Something, looking at all of them. Here they are, with giant families and names and no doubts about whether or not they’re a person. He wonders if any of them ever dream about giant foxes, growling about long-dead people. When they go over the Kyuubi attack in history, he sinks into his chair and tries not to yell.

That first month, no one talks to him, and he frequently sees parents whispering to other students while looking at him. Glaring. The teachers tend to ignore him when he tries to get help, and most of the weapons he’s given for training are run-down, far more than the other students. He senses a recurring pattern, attuned as he is into this sort of thing.

Kiiroi takes it upon himself to learn kanji and hiragana, because none of his teachers seem to care that he wouldn’t know it, barred from civilian schools as he was. He fails a lot of tests before he gets a hang of it. 

One night, he finally looks between his thighs, painstakingly reading the names written there and sounding out the characters. Haruno Sakura, on his right. Uchiha Sasuke on his left. Sakura’s in his class, a timid girl with weird, pink hair. He thinks he’s seen her being crowded by the other girls, at points. And Uchiha Sasuke....

He’s got no chance. They wouldn’t want anything to do with someone like him.

* * *

 

Heishi’s being yelled at again. The hokage monument had been done up in obnoxious paint, the faces given geisha makeup, and the teachers and hokage are understandably upset. There’s never any evidence pointing to him, but after the first and only time he was caught in a... prank, the teachers always assume it’s the blond boy that’s done something. 

He’s... weird. Sakura sees him in class and around the village sometimes, and he always looks tired, like he’s not sleeping, or like he’s scared. In class, almost all the answers he gives are wrong, and his marksmanship and taijutsu are always horrible. He’s always the first to leave, and it’s never with parents. Sakura heard he didn’t have any. 

Sometimes in the morning, before the class has time to really fill up, she’ll walk in and see him reading something that isn’t at all related to what they’re learning in classes. It’s usually above their level, actually, or barely related. They’ll meet eyes, her obviously exhausted from training and him blatantly, uh, reading, and they don’t question each other. It’s a like a weird pact, or something. Sure, Ino complains that she comes to class without her now, but the tiny interaction feels sacred somehow. Sakura doesn’t want to disrupt it. 

Ino also likes to mock her for cutting her hair at her shoulder and for dressing in more form-fitting clothes, so Ino can shut up. Sakura can walk herself up a tree, now, so she’s obviously doing better anyways.

* * *

 

There’s a photo hanging up in the library. Kiiroi squints up at it, nonplussed. Blond and shaggy hair, blue eyes, arranged on a tan face. It’s a solemn picture, and it’s hanging right next to the Sandaime’s. The old man’s picture is hung next to a painting of the Nidaime, who is to the right of the Shodaime.

The Yondaime looks like him. Creepily so.

Kiiroi glances back at the librarian on duty. It’s a bored chuunin who, from here, looks to be reading a fashion museum at the moment. Hesitating, the boy shifts in his henge and thinks.

_ Kyuubi. Where would I find village records?  _ The fox stirs, and the ever present anger makes him flinch; the dark amusement mixed in with it makes him regret asking. But the fox doesn’t snarl or yell, and instead sends up the image of a door packed between shelves of scrolls and books. There’s a window to the left of it, letting in some scant sunlight. It takes a few minutes to find, but. There it is.

He opens the door, checking that his henge (which had taken forever, as well as some research in dealing with  _ too much chakra _ ) was still in place, and walks in. It’s mustier than the main room in here, files upon files arranged in filing cabinets, along with scrolls that dot every surface.

He figures out, two hours in, that everything is alphabetical. Not by clan, or topic, or rank, just by character. He almost tears out his fake-silver hair at that. By then, it’s easy to find the file related to  _ Namikaze, Minato _ .

The identification picture is the same as the photo out in the main room, and a lot is blacked out. But it does have a name, of a wife. Uzumaki Kushina. He finds her, and she’s one of the thick ones, taking up the space of at least two folders. She’s originally from Uzushiogakure, and she was a jounin before she died, and a seal maker as well. But that’s not as important as the note that she has one son surviving her, name not listed. The same thing is on the Yondaime’s record, and their death dates are the same.

Uzumaki Kushina is also listed as a Jinchuriki in her file. He looks between the pictures and papers. He has her nose and chin.

He supposes that if they didn’t want him to know, they shouldn’t have made the blackout so obvious. Taking down the pictures of his father would have helped, too.

* * *

 

There’s a weird boy in the bookstore. He’s squinting at the titles, and he’s been hovering around the aisles longer than Sasuke’s been in here. He’s already got three books in hand, and a grocery bag full of ramen. Sasuke can see the spine of one. _The Tale of the Utterly_ _Gutsy Shinobi_. Stupid. He’s also standing in front of the section on elemental jutsu, and he won’t _move_.

“Will you  _ move _ ?” He finally snaps. The kid jumps, spinning around and sputtering when his red hair slaps him in the face. Idiot’s own fault for wearing it that long. “You’re in the way.”

“Huh? Oh.” He glances back at the shelves, grinning sheepishly. “Ehe, sorry ‘bout that! Lemme just-” he reaches out and grabs a scroll, seemingly at random, before darting to the counter. Sasuke scoffs and finally gets back to his own shopping. He needs to know more jutsu than just the clan techniques, if he wants to be able to kill Him.

* * *

 

Iruka’s nice. He doesn’t glare at Kiiroi, or ignore him, and when he found out that the boy’s textbooks and learning materials had been sabotaged, he had gone out of his way to get him correct information. He’d also managed to get half the teachers at the Academy fired, which was awesome. The fact he gave Kiiroi food sometimes just sealed the deal.

Which was why he asked him first.

“Iruka-sensei, do people ever change their name?” He hesitantly asks one night, hunching over his bowl of ramen. Bowls. There were many but this was the one with food still in it. Iruka glanced at him.

“Well, I suppose. Usually, people only do it if they get married or if they’ve been adopted. Why do you ask, Heishi-kun?” Kiiroi flinched, and played with his chopsticks.

“Don’t really like that name..” He muttered. “It’s- they just  _ told  _ me that was it after being called monster for six years. Had to find out my family name all on my freaking own.” Iruka stilled, and turned fully to the boy.

“H-... What do you mean by that?” Kiiroi looked up at him carefully. The man’s expression was unreadable. He ducked his face back down. It was easier to talk to the bowl.

“I didn’t really have a name until I entered the Academy. Everyone just called me boy or freak or monster, and then the old man told me I was going to be called Heishi, and that was that.” He shrugged, fidgeting slightly. “But um, last year, I got curious about who my parents were, and did some digging, and figured it out. But I don’t have either of their family names. Or one at all, I guess. It... kind of freaked me out for a while, not knowing, since I kind of  _ need _ a name, to make a  _ mark _ .”

“...Who are your parents?” Kiiroi scoffed.

“You already know, don’t you? Everyone does, they just don’t say anything. It’s obvious.” He glanced out the window, where the monument could be seen. “...It’s him. And my mom’s the Red Hot Habanero.” He grinned. “It was really cool learning that, how she’d gotten an S-rank flee on sight in the bingo books. Goes to show what a Jinchuriki can do.”

Iruka-sensei made a cut-off noise and rubbed at his brow. “I... you know about that, of course you do, you managed to figure out about the Yondaime. Although I am surprised you did, considering how you are  _ in class _ .” 

Kiiroi shrugged. “Class is boring, and it’s hard to pay attention when you go on and on. It’s better when I can just read, practice, and then move on to something else.”

“That’s- good to know. But, let’s get back to the actual topic. H-. What do you  _ want  _ to be called, if not Heishi?” He stayed quiet for a moment. There were a lot of names he had considered, and a lot of them were... they were cool, but they were also apparently stupid. He had been going off the Kyuubi’s scoffs, and nearly every one of had been treated as a joke. Unreliable, but the only tips he  _ could  _ rely on. There was one he really liked though, from a book he had read. The story had been great, and the character... something he wished he could be.

“Uzumaki Naruto.” He finally mumbled. Iruka smiled, and reached over the table to ruffle his hair.

“Alright, Naruto-kun. Finish your ramen.”

* * *

 

They looked at the name Uzumaki Naruto. It was still a mystery. Sakura decided to ensure her worth, while Sasuke decided to ensure their distance.  _ Weakness couldn’t be tolerated _ .

Naruto looked at theirs. His act in class wouldn’t win him any points if he said anything, and he had bigger worries at the moment.  _ It wasn’t worth it _ . 

Iruka-sensei only called him Naruto in private.

* * *

 

Mizuki was an asshole. Naruto was glad to tap into the Kyuubi’s wildness and call up about a hundred clones to beat the tar out of him. He was also glad that Iruka-sensei wasn’t, say, dying in a forest with a fuuma shuriken in his back. The ANBU had shown up once he started blasting out chakra, and had gotten the man to the hospital pretty quickly. 

He was up and assigning teams not two days later, looking to all the world like he was completely unharmed. It was a bright spot in the day when faced with his peers shouting  _ Heishi  _ and asking why the hell he was there. The only one to actually congratulate him was Sakura-chan, but she was probably only doing it out of pity. Great.

“Team Seven, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto!” Oh gods. What. What, what what- was he allowed to do that? Naruto’s ID card had still said Heishi. Didn’t it? He glanced over to his- his freaking  _ soulmates _ , god, who looked... 

Sakura-chan seemed almost ecstatic, glancing at the Uchiha every few seconds as if she couldn’t believe it. Her shoulders were wiggling every few seconds, and she had a wide grin. Sasuke was as blank as ever, keeping up his shitty holier-than-thou schtick, but Naruto could see the interested glimmer in his eye.

Oh crap. Names. What if they  _ brought it up _ ?

He put his head on the desk and consoled himself with the fact he wouldn’t have to out his secret to the whole class. The rest of the assignments went on, and some jounin-sensei showed up, having waited outside, obviously. Slowly, over the course of the morning, the classroom emptied, until it was only Sakura, Sasuke, and him left. Iruka-sensei was packing up, getting ready to head off. He came over to where Naruto was sitting right before he left, smiling.

Naruto gave him a hug because, it wasn’t really favoritism anymore, was it? He wasn’t his teacher anymore, he could do this. Iruka chuckled and hugged him back.

“Good luck, Naruto-kun. You too, Sasuke-kun, Sakura-chan.” He frowned a little at how tense the little blond was, but wrote it off as nerves, shutting the door with a click. Naruto kept staring at it, blank.

“ _ Naruto _ ?” He turned around. Sakura-chan was disbelieving, leaning over the desk as she stared. Sasuke had come out of his disinterested slouch and was staring him down. He let his grin drop.

“...Yeah. It’s a long story.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me on tumblr!  
> thenightisdarkandfullofbooty.tumblr.com


End file.
